A St. Paul man charged with beating up a quadruple amputee last week admitted Monday that he hit the woman, but only after she hit him first.

A criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court said Jacoby Laquan Smith got angry at his girlfriend, Tiesha Bell, because she blocked his view of the television in their East Side apartment. He threw Bell to the floor and punched her in the face more than 10 times in the March 22 incident, according to the criminal complaint.

But in a telephone interview, Smith, 33, said the dispute with Bell, 28, started with an argument over whether she was seeing another man.

“I had been dealing with her cheating on me,” Smith said.

Smith said the argument escalated after “I turned on the TV and she got mad.”

“She punched me in the groin,” Smith said. He said Bell also hit him with a coffee canister and a bedpan.

“It was full of pee,” he said.

In response, Smith said, “I hit her once and that was it. Maybe twice.”

Although Bell had both hands and part of both legs amputated because of a childhood illness, Smith said, she can still be violent when she loses her temper.

“She’ll swing, push me down and choke me with her nubs,” Smith said. He said she also hit him with her wheelchair.

Bell agreed Monday that there was hitting on both sides. She said she plans to marry Smith and doesn’t want him to serve jail time.

“We both need anger management,” she said.

Smith has been charged with fifth-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and interfering with a 911 call, a gross misdemeanor. He said he plans to turn himself in to St. Paul police later this week.

Richard has written the only newspaper correction/clarification at the Pioneer Press in the form of a limerick, and is responsible for the first use of "snot rocket" in the paper. In the furtherance of journalism, he has flown on the Goodyear Blimp, driven the Wienermobile, was mistaken for a serial killer, appeared at a Saints game dressed as a urine specimen mascot costume, helped a Lutheran pastor build her coffin and once won the Wisconsin Wife Carrying Championship. He was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

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